On Monday Samsung unveiled its new NX300 interchangeable lens compact camera along with a new 45mm "2D/3D" lens, claiming it is "the world's first single-lens 3D system." We met up with Samsung at CES to find out exactly how the company achieved this remarkable advance when other 3D cameras on the market instead rely on dual-lens systems.

The truth is the lens uses a clever repackaging of decidedly old school tech: an image splitter.

The lens is effectively a bog-standard 45mm f/1.8 lens design, according to Samsung spokesperson Frank Filiatrault. "When operating in 2D mode, it's the same as any other standard lens," he told Ars. "If you use this on our other cameras, it's just a nice, bright 45mm lens."

But activate the 3D switch built in to the lens, and a secondary lens group pops into place, sending two separate images to the image sensor.

Enlarge/ Look closely and you can see the dual-image element inside Samsung's 45mm f/1.8 2D/3D lens.

Chris Foresman

The effect is in fact nearly identical to using something like the Asahi Pentax Stereo Adapter. The model pictured below was sold throughout the late '70s, but Pentax made a version for its Spotmatic cameras in the '60s as well. The Stereo Adapter used mirrors to focus light from two separate openings through any standard 50mm lens, resulting in two side-by-side images on standard 35mm film. Shoot slide film, and you could pop the resulting dual-image slides into an included stereo viewer. (Viewing prints was a different matter, but even older gadgets exist for this purpose.)

What makes Samsung's new 45mm lens novel is that its designers effectively incorporated the stereo adapter into the lens itself.

But processing the two separate images into stereo stills and video also requires the advanced 20MP sensor and image processor built in to the NX300 camera. "Our other NX system cameras just don't have the necessary processing power to handle stereo images at this resolution," Filiatrault said.

While Samsung's clever idea has made it rather simple to capture 3D images and video, there's still one other technological hurdle: there aren't many ways for the average user to share and view 3D images and video. Samsung is leveraging the fact that it makes 3D TVs, so you can wirelessly connect an NX300 camera to one of its TVs and view the fruits of your 3D labor. For stills, it creates standard .mpo files as well, which are readable by some imaging software. Unfortunately, your friends and family are even less likely to have a 3D TV or computer display handy as they were to have a View-Master back in the day.

That doesn't mean we think Samsung's lens design is a bad idea. But it does serve to highlight the fact that while consumer electronics companies have been pushing 3D for a couple years now at CES, there doesn't seem to be a ubiquitous infrastructure for dealing with 3D content. Until such an infrastructure is in place, consumer demand for 3D content creation and consumption will likely remain a small, but novel, niche.

The other issue of course is going to be the very small parallax difference. Images from this setup are going to look like distant landscapes, except in macro photography. See http://xkcd.com/941/ to get an idea of the math in reverse.

The other issue of course is going to be the very small parallax difference. Images from this setup are going to look like distant landscapes, except in macro photography. See http://xkcd.com/941/ to get an idea of the math in reverse.

My thoughts exactly -- there's not much physical distance between those image elements -- unless they are using some software magic to make the parallax greater?!?

Please for the love of god will some company go "all in" on 3D - and subsequently bust big time - so that the rest of the tech manufacturers will give up and move on to something truly innovative. 3D film/photography is such a waste of time, money, and talent.

I don't know. After seeing the 3D preview for the 3D re-release of Jurassic Park, I'm convinced. I want to see that, and I'm amazed that there is the ability to get that impressive of an effect from a 3D conversion process. It certainly took a lot of time, money, and talent, but they have my butt in a seat with glasses on release.

Could this type of lens be fabricated for common lens mounts like Nikon, Canon, etc?

Of course it could be. But there is the problem of, "...processing the two separate images into stereo stills and video also requires the advanced 20MP sensor and image processor built in to the NX300 camera."

IOW, it would require the other camera companies to be convinced that it would be worth expending the engineering effort to reproduce it. Unless this really takes off in the consumer space, no one else is likely to bother.

While I realize that the technology to easily view 3D still has some catching up to do, I'm excited about the possibilities of documenting in 3D. I love looking at old pictures, both before my time and ones that instill a unique sense of nostalgia for me. The ability to document those moments with real depth and a visceral quality that flat photography lacks excites me. Like peering into a window from another time.

Please for the love of god will some company go "all in" on 3D - and subsequently bust big time - so that the rest of the tech manufacturers will give up and move on to something truly innovative. 3D film/photography is such a waste of time, money, and talent.

Samsung seems to love adding controversial features to their NX line. Last year it was the WiFi, now it's the 3D. Wonder what it'll be next year? Either way, I actually think they make good cameras and plan on getting the 45mm lens for my NX1000. However, I'll probably get the 2D version which is cheaper (the 2D/3D version is considerably more).

While I realize that the technology to easily view 3D still has some catching up to do, I'm excited about the possibilities of documenting in 3D. I love looking at old pictures, both before my time and ones that instill a unique sense of nostalgia for me. The ability to document those moments with real depth and a visceral quality that flat photography lacks excites me. Like peering into a window from another time.

What you are talking about has existed for about 150 years. My great grandmother had one of these. Way way before the View-Master was the stereoscope:

Samsung seems to love adding controversial features to their NX line. Last year it was the WiFi, now it's the 3D. Wonder what it'll be next year? Either way, I actually think they make good cameras and plan on getting the 45mm lens for my NX1000. However, I'll probably get the 2D version which is cheaper (the 2D/3D version is considerably more).

And now everyone and their dog is adding wi-fi, (Sony, Nikon jump to mind) its a solid feature. Now this 3D thing maybe another story but more features are rarely a bad thing in my books

My 2 cents: I bought Nvidia 3D Vision 2 glasses thinking that at least computer games can easily show 3D. I was wrong. Compatibility is terrible. 2D artifacts are everywhere (HINT: never mix 2D and 3D, it's nauseating). Even when you get full 3D: it requires tweaks for the 3D effects, reduced quality settings to shore up the framerate, and adds exciting game crashes to the mix.

When I tried to view awesome 3D content on the web I discovered there's something like a dozen different 3D formats. None of them work with Nvidia 3D Vision. Lovely. Screw 3D.

We have them. Autostereoscopic displays have been around for a while, I'm willing to bet everybody has seen at least one in the form of a lenticular lens image (the ones that show a few different images as you move them around). And it's possible to make it work large-scale (see this company). But to make it work for a large range of viewing positions and to not have the viewer locked in one place requires a lot of effort (think 32 instead of 2 images, and 32 projectors to display them).

Cool? Absolutely! Ready for home deployment? Only if you're a millionaire.

I think an alternative 3d capture method is also just moving the camera (as in video)--even if the people move around, a smarter camera will see them and figure out where they go in the 3D backdrop.

The optical image stabilization mechanisms in many current cameras already move the lens elements very quickly and precisely to cancel out your hand movements. I wonder if that mechanism can be extended to help the lens record multiple viewpoints Lytro-style within a very short period of time.

With regards to why 3D is not really catching on...

Is the problem with 3D the lack of a standard? What I'm thinking is that if you want to record and play back a 2D photograph, everyone knows JPEG's got you covered on any gadget from TV to printer. If you want to record and play back a video, you can rely on H.264 from smartphone viewing to uploading to YouTube. Is there an equivalent 3D format everyone can rely on, or is it all silos for now?

WRT viewing the stuff, I dunno. Pretty much everyone I know who has purchased an HDTV in the past six months has purchased a 3D TV "just because."

I can't really speak for anyone else, but the most recent HDTV that I purchased turned out to have 3-D when I got it home. It wasn't promoted at the store and I didn't know about it until I was cabling it up and discovered the jack for the goggles.

Denkkar wrote:

When I tried to view awesome 3D content on the web I discovered there's something like a dozen different 3D formats. None of them work with Nvidia 3D Vision. Lovely. Screw 3D.

And that's why I don't watch any 3-D content on my 72 inch screen. It uses the quincunx format which as far as I know is supported by absolutely no one these days. The last time that I looked for a converter box, it was a Windows media PC that cost over a grand. So I don't watch a lot 3-D right now.

No we don't. Why do we need that? Sure, I was impressed by the 3D effects in Life of Pi, but do we really need 3D at all?

We don't need 3D. We don't need color. We don't even need sound. But some of us want it, therefore we should be aloud to get it. Just because you don't want something, doesn't mean it shouldn't be allowed.

Please for the love of god will APPLE go "all in" on IPADS - and subsequently bust big time - so that the rest of the tech manufacturers will give up and move on to something truly innovative. IPADS are such a waste of time, money, and talent.

Is the problem with 3D the lack of a standard? What I'm thinking is that if you want to record and play back a 2D photograph, everyone knows JPEG's got you covered on any gadget from TV to printer. If you want to record and play back a video, you can rely on H.264 from smartphone viewing to uploading to YouTube. Is there an equivalent 3D format everyone can rely on, or is it all silos for now?

No, it's because a significant percentage of the market either can't see the stereo effect, or finds it uncomfortable after short to medium viewing times, and that percentage increases somewhat with age.

If in any given household there is one person for whom 3d viewing is not an option, either that person is excluded from watching TV/movies with their family, or the TV is left in 2D mode.

For everyone else it's just the usual cost/value factor. Paying for Avatar in 3d might make sense, but Bernie perhaps not so much. Moving people from silent to sound, or black and white to color was easy, as once they'd experienced the new format there was no going back. 3D doesn't have quite the same stickiness.

My thoughts exactly -- there's not much physical distance between those image elements -- unless they are using some software magic to make the parallax greater?!?

It could be possible. Use the two frames and some machine vision software to rangefind common elements of the image against eachother. There would be a big loss of precision to worry about, what you got would probably look more like Magic Eye or artificial 3d with stacked flat cutouts and slopes instead of objects and there would be artifacts around the edges of the objects where there wasn't any info on what was behind the object to put in the modified view.

For those arguing about 3D being old tech and whether it works at all, a reminder that Panasonic make a current stereo lens (with two entrance apertures) for micro 4/3. The Samsung approach looks a little more interesting, and it's much faster (not f/12), but it's certainly not the only 3D lens for current cameras. Plus there are a few 3D compacts out on the market.

I've seen 3D images on an Evo 3D and they actually weren't bad. I don't really have the ability to view them, though, so I'm not rushing to jump on board. If I wanted 3D, I could always use two cameras, or (for static scenes) two exposures, so it's not high on the list of lenses that would make me jump camera system. Kudos for being different, though.

What a silly product... the small parallax makes this hardware barely show 3D. I guess it's fine for when you turn to the person sitting at the table next to you and take a shot of their face (in such a situation the small parallax would be preferable actually)... but across a room it's so flat you might as well be in 2D mode.

As with most of you I didn't dive into 3D in the home either, but my projector downstairs is begging for an upgrade and seeing the Hobbit in 3D recently has got me thinking about it again. I don't actually watch that much in the way of movies but recording my own videos in 3D and watching them at home on the big screen is pretty appealing.

Is anyone doing this? Do you find the 3D effect adds to the experience of reliving your video memories?

As for this product, the interocular distance concerns me. I think a pair of GoPros with their 3D rig might be better.

I don't know. After seeing the 3D preview for the 3D re-release of Jurassic Park, I'm convinced. I want to see that, and I'm amazed that there is the ability to get that impressive of an effect from a 3D conversion process. It certainly took a lot of time, money, and talent, but they have my butt in a seat with glasses on release.

I've seen a couple of 3D films in theaters - Avatar and The Hobbit. In both cases, the 3D effect didn't add anything to the movie that lasted much past the first few minutes. The Hobbit's visual extras (the high frame rate) was actually a drawback, as the lack of motion blur gave the film the same kind of 'unreal reality' I normally associate with the odd directionless lighting that soap operas use.

I don't expect that consumer or pro-sumer 3D will be 'here' for quite some time if it ever does arrive. Before something like this can take off, there has to be some kind of unencumbered common data exchange formats that enjoy wide support. Which likely won't happen until these data types are widely used. It's a good bet that none of the players in this space will see any value in helping to ensure that (for example) 3D content generated by Sony cameras can be viewed on TVs manufactured by Samsung or monitors made by LG.

It's a good bet that none of the players in this space will see any value in helping to ensure that (for example) 3D content generated by Sony cameras can be viewed on TVs manufactured by Samsung or monitors made by LG.

Late on the reply, but one of us is mistaken about the current state of 3D content interoperability. It's my understanding that 3D content (especially 3D content on a Blu-ray) can be used/read by any consumer 3D gear. Maybe if you try to start rolling your own solution or talk about different codecs/containers available from various online sources you find an issue.

The only disconnect among manufacturers as far as I know is on the hardware side -- notably the fact that there wasn't (still isn't?) a standard for active shutter glasses. So your Sony glasses won't work on a Samsung display. But content isn't the issue(or cameras used to create the content).

It's a good bet that none of the players in this space will see any value in helping to ensure that (for example) 3D content generated by Sony cameras can be viewed on TVs manufactured by Samsung or monitors made by LG.

Late on the reply, but one of us is mistaken about the current state of 3D content interoperability. It's my understanding that 3D content (especially 3D content on a Blu-ray) can be used/read by any consumer 3D gear. Maybe if you try to start rolling your own solution or talk about different codecs/containers available from various online sources you find an issue.

The only disconnect among manufacturers as far as I know is on the hardware side -- notably the fact that there wasn't (still isn't?) a standard for active shutter glasses. So your Sony glasses won't work on a Samsung display. But content isn't the issue(or cameras used to create the content).

Commercial 3D sources are OK on interoperability. That's based on extensions to the H.264 CODEC. The hardware manufacturers and studios take care of the royalty payments due the H.264 consortium. All the players in commercial 3D video are highly motivated to make that work as seamlessly as possible, which is why they worked together to develop that spec.

User-generated 3D (such as the images generated by the camera in the article), on the other hand, enjoys nothing like the motive to make 3D blu-ray work. Users won't pay per-image or per-film royalties on things they create, so the existing interoperable formats aren't viable choices. Coming up with something new that everyone supports runs into the 'why should I help you' problem that plagues new tech. Samsung's bottom line isn't improved this quarter by making Sony cameras work, and Sony's bottom line this quarter isn't improved by making Samsung cameras work. Until 3D cameras become popular, that likely won't change. And until that changes, 3D cameras won't become popular.

I generally agree, but most of that only applies to something like trying to plug a Sony camera directly into a Samsung TV. I don't know how many people really do that. Most people transfer the contents of their cameras to their PCs and view them there I think. Once it's on a PC it can be converted to whatever format a playback device might require for TV display. Today it's likely anyone capturing 3D video already has that PC directly connected to their 3D display which probably resolves much of the format issue.

I generally agree, but most of that only applies to something like trying to plug a Sony camera directly into a Samsung TV. I don't know how many people really do that. Most people transfer the contents of their cameras to their PCs and view them there I think. Once it's on a PC it can be converted to whatever format a playback device might require for TV display. Today it's likely anyone capturing 3D video already has that PC directly connected to their 3D display which probably resolves much of the format issue.

That 'convert to the required format' step is the thing that's missing at the moment. H.264 is common to 3D displays, but the licensing is complex and expensive. Alternative formats exist, but they aren't well supported. Samsung's use of one of those alternative formats means that their cool hardware is not helping to make this tech mainstream.

That 'convert to the required format' step is the thing that's missing at the moment. H.264 is common to 3D displays, but the licensing is complex and expensive. Alternative formats exist, but they aren't well supported. Samsung's use of one of those alternative formats means that their cool hardware is not helping to make this tech mainstream.

Ok, I guess there's more to it than I realized. I thought you had your basic methods such as frame interleave, top-and-bottom, side-by-side, and then whatever codec you feel like encoding it with. I just assume everything's h.264 now and that anyone who has the resources to manufacture a camera or TV can afford whatever codec licenses are necessary. That it's not simple to convert from one method or codec to another is news to me.

Leave it to greedy companies and patents to make everything more difficult and expensive.

That 'convert to the required format' step is the thing that's missing at the moment. H.264 is common to 3D displays, but the licensing is complex and expensive. Alternative formats exist, but they aren't well supported. Samsung's use of one of those alternative formats means that their cool hardware is not helping to make this tech mainstream.

Ok, I guess there's more to it than I realized. I thought you had your basic methods such as frame interleave, top-and-bottom, side-by-side, and then whatever codec you feel like encoding it with. I just assume everything's h.264 now and that anyone who has the resources to manufacture a camera or TV can afford whatever codec licenses are necessary. That it's not simple to convert from one method or codec to another is news to me.

Leave it to greedy companies and patents to make everything more difficult and expensive.

Conversion may not be much of a technical challenge at all. I'm no video engineer, so I'm not really in a position to say. Samsung could have chosen to use a format (or provide a tool) that would do the conversion to something widely supported. That they didn't means that either the H.264 licensing was too complex or expensive (which would be my bet), or that they aren't interested in making consumer 3D mainstream. Which, given how cool this hardware is, is a shame.